Letters to the Editor

TOUGH TIMES

DEAR MERCURY—Irrespective of the ethical considerations
when it comes to the penises of 18- or near-18-year-olds; that the
editors of the Willamette Week consider an $8,000 raise and
trading one stressful career for another [à la Amy Ruiz] a bribe
says more about the sad state of professional journalism and the
economy than it does anything else.

-Alan Storm

BETTER WITH BEER

DEAR EDITOR—I’m only halfway through reading your cover
article for this week [“No One Is Innocent,” Feature, Jan 29], but
already I want to THANK YOU for being the single media outlet last week
not to condemn Sam Adams outright; for your balanced and
level reporting of the subject this week; and for
breaking our overt seriousness in this fiasco with levity [One Day at a
Time, Jan 29]. Not lastly, [for] answering some of our questions about
Amy Ruiz, whom we thought fishy for applying for a position she
admittedly wasn’t qualified for.

-Jon Leeper

OFF THE HOOK

Regarding Mr. Humphrey’s premise, I’m pretty sure that if I had
advised Sam Adams to slander Bob Ball and John Vezina, and hire a
reporter to whom he had previously lied to about a scandal that
had threatened his political career, that I would remember it [“No
One Is Innocent,” Feature, Jan 29]. I’m innocent. I certainly agree
that people’s private lives should remain private. I certainly
don’t think Adams’ conduct, whatever exactly it was, was as
morally wrong as Goldschmidt’s. But the reason this blew up into a
scandal in the first place is because of the way Adams handled it.
He could have lied without suggesting that Ball and Vezina
were themselves guilty of sexual assaults, and without creating an
apparent conflict of interest by hiring [Amy] Ruiz.

-Neil Anderson

LEONARD’S LOSS

EDITOR—There is one more obvious casualty beyond the three you
identified [“No One Is Innocent,” Feature, Jan 29]. That person is
Randy Leonard, Portland city commissioner and confidant of Sam Adams.
When the gay underage sex story was broken to Leonard by Bob Ball,
Randy became the “front man” for Adams; like a pit bull, he attacked
any and all people, papers, and rumors that suggested Adams was lying.
Sam Adams sat by, fed Leonard false information, and applauded the
attacks on Ball, all the while allowing Leonard to make a fool of
himself.

-Jim Speirs

BUT OBAMA IS HANDSOME

DEAR MERCURY—Last week, just a few days after Obama was
sworn in, he ordered some bombs dropped on a Pakistani village, which
killed some people. This is the man that you sad fucks worship like a
God. I can practically smell the collective jizz on every image of his
face that gets printed and circulated. Know who else liked to have his
image as widespread as possible? STALIN.

-Travis

BIBLIO BIVALVE!

DEAR MERCURY—In his review of EaT, Patrick Alan Coleman
perhaps should have quoted Jonathan Swift on oysters: “‘Twas a brave
man indeed that ate the first oyster” [“Let’s EaT,” Last Supper, Jan
29].

-Lukas Sherman

CONGRATULATIONS TO LUKAS for changing the subject, if only as a
brief reminder that life, and lunch, goes on, even as scandal and chaos
plague our city. Lukas gets two tickets to the Laurelhurst Theater and
lunch at No Fish! Go Fish!, where you shouldn’t order anything for
which you can’t produce an accompanying literary quote.